


Cat's in the Cradle

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-03
Updated: 2007-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sam beside Dean's hospital bed, waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat's in the Cradle

The nurse on night duty in the ICU frowned at John.

"You shouldn't be walking around by yourself," she said. The disapproving purse of her lips reminded him uncannily of Sister Mary Katherine, terror of the fourth grade, and he half-expected her to pull a ruler from the desk drawer and demand that he hold out his hand.

John straightened his shoulders, doing his best to hide a wince, and replied, "I want to see my son."

Her expression didn't soften. "They're still in five."

"Thank you," he said simply. Then his mind caught up with his ears. "They?"

The nurse only nodded before looking down at her paperwork. John wondered why he was surprised. He walked slowly through the ICU, winding around the desk and past the glass walls of the individual rooms. The area around the desk was brightly lit, but the rooms were dark except for the green and red lights on the mess of monitors around every bed. It smelled like sickness, like antiseptic and waiting to die, overlain by the heady scent of a bouquet of flowers at the nurses' station.

The light was off in room five and the curtains were drawn, but the door was open. John paused in the doorway and leaned against the frame. Sam was sitting beside the bed in a green plastic chair, holding Dean's hand and speaking quietly. His voice was too soft to hear clearly; after watching for a moment, John felt a pang of guilt for trying to eavesdrop.

He cleared his throat, and Sam looked around, startled. "Dad. Hi." He sat up straighter but didn't let go of Dean's hand. "How are you feeling?"

Dragging another chair over, John sat down beside Sam. "You should be in bed," he said. The words sounded gruffer than he intended, so he added, "You need to rest too."

Sam looked at him steadily and said, "The doctors said it might help if we sit with him and talk to him." His expression was unreadable in the shadowed room, his face unfamiliar and dark behind the patchwork of bruises and cuts.

The doctors had said quite a few things, most of which John suspected was nothing more than a load of crap from overeducated morons who were desperately trying to sound like they knew what they were talking about. It would almost be funny, he thought, the number of diagnoses and ten-dollar words they came up with every day to explain massive internal bleeding and a coma that had no apparent cause.

It would be almost funny, if he didn't have the memory of reaching into his son's chest with claws made of nothing but malice and power, if he didn't still have the sharp, metallic taste of his son's blood on his tongue and the sound of his desperate pleas in his ears, if Dean wasn't lying unconscious in a hospital bed, barely able to breathe for himself, his body battered to hell and his mind lost somewhere behind too-pale skin and eyes that hadn't opened in three days.

John swallowed painfully and exhaled.

"They might spring me loose tomorrow," he told Sam. That wasn't quite true; the doctor had said _a few days_, but John wasn't willing to spend much longer chained to his own hospital bed. The trail was already cold; if he waited much longer and they would be back where they had started, without a single clue or lead, nothing to do except for wait for the demon to come after them.

Again, there was that quick, inscrutable glance from Sam. It had been a long, long time since John was able to figure out what those looks of his younger son's meant, and without Dean there to translate he felt lost. He leaned forward, smoothed a crease in Dean's blanket, sat back again.

"He hates hospitals," Sam said suddenly. "Just a few hours in an emergency room drives him crazy, but a few days?" He shook his head, almost smiling with some fond amusement that John didn't understand. "He hates it."

John opened his mouth to ask how Sam knew that, but he stopped himself just in time.

When Sam looked at him again, though, he knew that Sam had heard the unspoken question.

"Rawhead," Sam said. The half-smile was gone, and his voice was low and restrained. "It was holed up in an old house outside of Indianapolis, had a couple of little kids trapped. We went in after it and Dean -- Dean was standing in the same puddle of water as the Rawhead when he zapped it. A shock that big -- it damaged his heart."

John didn't say anything. Couple of little kids trapped. _Hell, Dean._

"You never asked."

"Sam..." he began.

Sam interrupted him, "You never even _asked_. I called you."

And there it was: the anger John had been expecting for three days, ever since he'd woken up to find Sam standing over him, the words _coma_ and _intensive care_ and _doctors don't know_ filtering through a haze of pain medication and panic.

"I called you," Sam repeated. "I told you he was sick. I called every fucking person we know asking for help, and you were the only one who didn't bother to call back. People we haven't talked to in _years_ called back trying to help, telling me how worried they were, saying if we needed anything to just ask. People you alienated years ago. But you -- his own fucking father -- you couldn't even pick up the phone to call."

Sam was glaring at him, his eyes a little bit wild, and John didn't let himself look away. He remembered the call, remembered the fear and jagged hope in Sam's voice, his own nausea and paranoia, the shadows he saw on every corner and threats he sensed in every night.

"Sammy--"

"Dean was _dying_, Dad. His heart was damaged and the doctors said there was no way to fix it except for a transplant, but you know that's impossible for somebody with no money and no insurance and no time to wait and no legal identity anymore. They gave him a _month_. One month, if even that. How long was it going to take you to call back? A week, two weeks? Two months before you sent a set of coordinates and nothing else? Lot of good that would've done. His whole fucking life he's only ever done what you wanted him to, and when he needed you most you--"

Sam stopped abruptly.

He turned away from John, deflating and slouching down in the chair again. John stared at his son's profile, half-hidden behind that messy hair that always needed cutting, his jaw tense and his eyes filled with tears that were never going to fall. Sam was gripping Dean's hand so hard it would have hurt like hell, if Dean had been awake to feel it.

John opened his mouth, hesitated.

_Coward,_ he chided himself. _You should know._

"What did you do?"

Sam snorted. "What do you care? You never asked--"

"I'm asking now."

Without looking at John, Sam spoke, his voice flat and expressionless. "There was this reverend, a faith healer. Joshua told us about him, and I -- I tricked Dean into going. I told him we were seeing a specialist. We didn't -- it turned out his wife had bound a reaper and was using it to trade for lives she thought were worthy. But we didn't know that until after -- until after Dean was healed and somebody else had--"

John felt a chill run through him. "Somebody died in his place?"

"Yes. Dean -- he didn't like it when we found out, but it was too late. We stopped her from doing it anymore." Sam glanced at John quickly. There was no guilt in his look, only defiance. Dean may not have liked it, but Sam was offering no apologies.

Reaching out, John rested his hand on the bed, not quite touching Dean. He was so still, so quiet, everything that Dean shouldn't be, as pale as the sheets and hooked up to too many machines, tubes and wires sticking out all around. Like a punch to the gut, John remembered one Halloween, years and years ago; Dean wanted to be a robot, had pestered John for days until he finally gave in and spent an evening in the garage, hot-gluing nuts and bolts and bits of wire to a cardboard box and fashioning antennae out of aluminum foil.

Of course it was Dean's heart that had gotten him in trouble.

_Eye for an eye._

That was a hell of a burden his boys had been carrying all these months.

_Damn it, Dean. You could think about waking up now._

"I would have done the same thing," John said. He hoped that somehow, maybe, both of his sons heard him.

Sam looked at him for a long moment. "I don't think he's forgiven me yet."

John shook his head, feeling the ridiculous urge to smile. "You saved his life, Sammy. There's nothing that needs to be forgiven."

There never was, not between the two of them. There were a lot of things he didn't know about his sons, mixed up and tangled in the fights and disagreements, the arguments and anger and leaving, but that one was easy. He thought it had changed, when Sam left without even looking back, but he should have known better. They did what they had to do, and nobody apologized for it.

And somewhere along the line, while John hadn't been paying attention, it had gone from him taking care of his sons to them taking care of each other. He supposed that was just them doing what they had to do, as well.

His throat tightened, and he lifted his hand, patted Dean's leg awkwardly.

"We're not leaving," Sam said.

John looked at him in surprise. "What?"

"We're not leaving until he wakes up."

The doctor's words echoed in John's mind. _Don't know, don't know._ "They said--"

"He _is_ going to wake up," Sam said, "and we're going to be here when he does."

He got that from his mother, John thought, smiling sadly. That stubbornness that had nothing to do with pride and everything to do with simply refusing to let this bitch of an unfair world get away with its nastiest tricks.

"We're staying," John agreed.

_For now._

He could feel the trail fading, feel the demon slipping away while he did nothing but wait and worry and wait some more. It could be anywhere, possess anyone, become anything; it could vanish entirely and leave him with nothing to show for twenty-three years of hunting but a couple of angry, broken sons he hardly recognized anymore and so much scar tissue it was a wonder he felt anything at all.

"He'll wake up," Sam said. He wasn't defiant now; he sounded scared and young and sick with worry.

John put his hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezed it gently. "You should get some sleep. The nurses will be after us if we stay here much longer."

But neither of them moved away.


End file.
